Bodies Without Voices: Masculinized Spaces and the Unspoken Places in Physical Education Classes

• In Event: Roundtable Session 111
  In Roundtable Session: For the Health of It: Interrogating Boys, Bodies, and Unspoken School Spaces

Abstract

Objectives/Purpose
In this paper, the authors first examine and identify the ways in which bodily practices of “preferred” adolescent boys operate to (re)produce and entrench an ethic of heteronormativity in physical health education spaces. The purpose of this paper is to carefully interrogate how marginalized and “othered” boys within the dominant physical culture of “gym” employ strategies of negotiation, resistance, and desistance against dominant masculine codes of practice. The authors critique the largely ignored and unsurveilled physical spaces in which physical education is performed (such as locker/change rooms, showers, fields, and gym floors), as places rife with the othering of boys on the masculine margins.
Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
This research provides a sociological/biopedagogical examination of high school boys’ perceptions of their bodies and the underlying discourses of masculinity operating in secondary schools. Our research identifies the ways that adolescent male bodies operate as entities upon which gender is inscribed and through which gender is constructed (Neverson & White, 2002). For men and women, boys and girls, choices are made, within cultural parameters, either to affirm, negotiate, or reject dominant codes of masculinity and femininity expressed through performative acts of gender. Within men’s studies Connell’s (1995) notion of hegemonic masculinity as well as his attention to the body as emblematic of valued and undervalued masculinities is particularly useful in our analysis. This paper provides a nuanced analysis of the masculine adolescent body as it becomes publicly visible on broad social scale and scrutinized amidst a broader public concern for health; especially the health of youth.
Methods/modes of inquiry
Drawing from a qualitative, national study of boys’ embodied experiences with physical education, the authors analyse lived realities of adolescent men whose bodies are rendered voiceless in these sometime damaging and threatening spaces.
Data sources/ evidence
The data for this paper comes from a larger national study involving 72 grade nine boys. Data collection for this project is organized in three stages involving field observations, secured-site blogging (journaling) and semi-structured interviews.
Results/conclusions
 Specific concerns for boys about obesity, health and health risks are directly linked to their perceptions of masculinity and assumptions about proper attitudes and behaviours for boys.
 Responding to the invisibility of gender in dominant forms of physical education pedagogy and policy, specifically with regard to adolescent boys and obesity, is paramount because of the implications and benefits gender equity accrues to women, girls, and communities more broadly.
Scholarly significance
Concerns for improving physical fitness and involvement in a range of physical cultures among children (and specifically among boys) prompts a relatively unexplored set of questions about the relationship between the masculine body, gender identities, healthy lifestyle practices, and schooling. This paper extends previous research on boys, bodies and physical cultures by intersecting masculinities theory, with sport, the sociology of bodies, and health education. In doing so, our research adds insight into a culture of masculinities and homophobia in schools that contributes to the suppression and silencing of anxieties about body image among high school boys.

Authors

• Michael D. Kehler, University of Western Ontario

• Michael Atkinson, University of Toronto